Selected Sermons, Prayers, and Devotions - Softcover

Newman was preacher to the University Church at Oxford, so his sermons address the "big questions" that eternally vex undergraduates--Who is God? How am I to live? Who was Jesus? Newman's answers are straightforward yet sophisticated, and very often grounded in ethics. "Outward acts, done on principle, create inward habits. I repeat, the separate acts of obedience to the will of God, good works as they are called, are of service to us, as gradually severing us from this world of sense, and impressing our hearts with a heavenly character," he writes, in a sermon called "Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness." Newman's preoccupation with ethics intensified after his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1843, along with his growing conviction that life in this world is best understood as preparation for life in the next one. Gomes observes that, "For Newman the only security in this world of tribulation is the unseen reality of the spiritual world, a world which (sic) is ruled by Christ, and for which Christ gave himself up for our redemption, which act is recapitulated in the sacramental life of the believer." Newman's sermons, with their astringent ethical focus, were in part a reaction to the increasing secularism and materialism of the 19th century. (He lived from 1801-1890.) In this regard, our fin de siècle echoes his and makes a contemporary reader's attention to his sermons all the more urgent and rewarding. --Michael Joseph Gross